ight not do worse than spend the remainder of his life in the midst
of such grandeur and beauty.

He now frequently encountered streams and brooks of more or less
importance flowing down into the main stream on either side of the
ravine, but they were scarcely sufficient in volume to account for the
large quantity of water which now went dashing and foaming and sparkling
over a bed of huge boulders. At length he came to the end of the
ravine, and there he beheld a sight which amply rewarded him for all the
labour which he had undergone in following the stream. The ravine
terminated in a vertical wall of rock fully a thousand feet in height,
from an immense fissure in which, near the top, there spouted a column
of water which he estimated to be at least twelve feet in diameter. For
fully a third of the distance this liquid column poured down unbroken,
to be dashed into spray and mist--in which a rainbow softly beamed--upon
an immense spike of rock which divided the flow into two nearly equal
parts, and formed two superb cascades one on each side of the projecting
rock.

At this point it was easy for an active man to cross the stream without
wetting his feet, by jumping from boulder to boulder; and this the
engineer did, for he saw that in order to reach the mountain he would
have to get on the opposite side of the stream and follow its downward
course for nearly a mile. When at length he climbed up the steep and
lofty side of the ravine and reached its brow, the nearest spur of the
mountain was only about a mile and a half distant, and for this he at
once made. His route now lay over a flat table-land, out of which the
mountain seemed to spring at once, and almost sheer. On reaching the
base of the hill, however, its sides proved to be not quite so steep as
they had appeared to be, but they were nevertheless steep enough to tax
Gaunt's muscles to their utmost extent before he finally reached the
bald summit.

He had now spread around and beneath him a prospect of such surpassing
beauty as he thought he had never gazed upon before. The sea bounded
his horizon on every side, whilst the entire island lay spread out like
a map beneath him, with all its bold undulations, its streams, the lake,
and the arm of the sea distinctly visible; and with the aid of his
telescope he was even able to discern the gleaming white canvas of the
tent which marked the position of the little party he had left behind.
Nay more, when he